Royal Mail's £8 customs handling charge - any way to avoid? Is it legal?

magiccake

custardy wrote: »

Well you should have dealt with it yourself...........

I would have been delighted, had I been offered the opportunity. RM presumed to pay the fee on my behalf without asking me first.

DCFC79 wrote: »

Dont buy stuff from america and jobs a good un.

Not really a solution, is it? And it's any country outside of the EU.

visidigi wrote: »

The border agency wouldn't send you a letter for free. They could charge you a fee for that, don't be surprised if its also around £8.

Everything has a cost. 'Just' doing something isn't free.

I'd be very surprised if HMRC billed people for handling payments of import taxes. Next time I have an international parcel I'll try the self-clearance route and let you know.

magiccake

visidigi wrote: »

That's what RM charge for, the movement of the mail to the HMRC staff which they pay for to be present in a hub location for speedy expediting of international freight through the hubs.

According to RM customer service, the charge covers:

Operating the postal customs depot
Handling the package for customs examination
Opening, repacking and resealing the package if required
Paying the charges to HMRC on a recipient’s behalf

custardy

magiccake wrote: »

According to RM customer service, the charge covers:

Operating the postal customs depot
Handling the package for customs examination
Opening, repacking and resealing the package if required
Paying the charges to HMRC on a recipient’s behalf

All this effort and yet no research before the fees you were aware of.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

visidigi

magiccake wrote: »

I would have been delighted, had I been offered the opportunity. RM presumed to pay the fee on my behalf without asking me first.

RM didn't presume, the shipper didn't instruct them otherwise therefore they are the default processor.

magiccake wrote: »

I'd be very surprised if HMRC billed people for handling payments of import taxes. Next time I have an international parcel I'll try the self-clearance route and let you know.

HMRC won't bill you for the clearance, but they might bill you for the presentation of paperwork/postal items. if you self clear you will need to check if the RM will complete delivery for you post clearance or not - if they hold it on your behalf they have the right to charge storage fees if not completed in a timely fashion (storage isn't free either).

Good luck with the self clearance, you'll need it.

visidigi

magiccake wrote: »

According to RM customer service, the charge covers:

Operating the postal customs depot
Handling the package for customs examination
Opening, repacking and resealing the package if required
Paying the charges to HMRC on a recipient’s behalf

Yeah that's what I said...(covered by point one).

magiccake

custardy wrote: »

All this effort and yet no research before the fees you were aware of.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I did say in my original post that the point of this thread is not to complain but rather to find a way to avoid the clearance fee, which I think is ludicrous.

Surely you must see that an £8 fee for a £4 customs charge is pretty unjustifiable. That is a massive barrier to international trade.

hcb42

I don't think it a massive barrier to international trade.

It is a cost one ought to factor in when buying low value items from overseas

visidigi

magiccake wrote: »

I did say in my original post that the point of this thread is not to complain but rather to find a way to avoid the clearance fee, which I think is ludicrous.

Surely you must see that an £8 fee for a £4 customs charge is pretty unjustifiable. That is a massive barrier to international trade.

Parcel Force: We have two levels of clearance fee for import parcels. There is a charge of £13.50 for express parcels imported with GLS or through the EMS channel from other Posts networks and also for high value standard parcels (valued at over €1000).

Royal Mail: For all other import parcels, an £8 charge will apply.

The fee is fixed, no matter what the value of the goods, so on low value items its more punishing, on higher ones its much cheaper than other international carriers which revert to a % of total value when the value is high.

There is no barrier to international trade here - the UK clearance fee is quite cheap, you want to try importing to Brazil or India - Nintendo just stopped selling in the former due to the costs...

visidigi

Oh and just to give the source of the above text its here:

http://www.parcelforce.com/parcelforce-worldwide-clearance

And to highlight the fees I mentioned that would be levied if clearance is not performed quickly the following text is also on the page...

We will also make a charge if we have to hold your parcel whilst Customs process it, so we would recommend that you respond promptly to any Customs queries to avoid these charges. We will not levy a fee for the first 10 days, after 10 days however, storage fees will be charged. For more than 10 and up to 20 working days, - £5.50 per parcel. For each subsequent working day over 20 working days - £1.35 per parcel. All parcels valued at over £2,000 are placed in secure storage until completion of Customs formalities.

paddyrg

There are other shipping companies - next time ask for FedEx or whoever, and ask for the duty to be prepaid (some shipping companies will do this, they preestimate it and collect on posing rather than delivery). Of course this costs more than the $25 paid for postage, but as long as it's not a 'rip-off', right? ;-)

It's perfectly possible to do your own clearance, but £8 is a total bargain. Look at your hourly pay from work - that's maybe 1 hour of overtime? It'll take longer than an hour to do the paperwork, plus on top of that, bonded storage and still requiring RM to pluck your package from the mail stream, and then potentially onward delivery (as you don't want them to do their bit).

Bonded storage, a friend imported a teensy small rug once, the clearance agents (not RM) charged £8 for the first week, then £8/day until he could collect and complete clearance. He spent £100 all told in warehouse and fees. And this was back in the 1990's, it hadn't got any cheaper!